Hey, sorry for the newbie question here. Have been reading the docs but need some guidance, please. I’ve forked Discourse and made my own changes, which I’d like to then do my own deploy from. The guide on contributing walks you through how to make changes and submit a PR, but in this instance, I don’t want to do a PR. I’d just like to take my tiny change and get a Discourse install working from that. I thought the way to do that was to change this line to my own repo: image/base/Dockerfile master # NAME: discourse/base # VERSION: release FROM debian:buster-slim ENV PG_MAJOR 13 ENV RUBY_ALLOCATOR /usr/lib/libjemalloc.so.1 ENV RAILS_ENV production #LABEL maintainer="Sam Saffron \"https://twitter.com/samsaffron\"" RUN echo 2.0.`date +%Y%m%d` > /VERSION RUN apt update && apt install -y gnupg sudo curl RUN echo "debconf debconf/frontend select Teletype" | debconf-set-selections RUN apt update && apt -y install fping RUN sh -c "fping proxy && echo 'Acquire { Retries \"0\"; HTTP { Proxy \"http://proxy:3128\";}; };' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/40proxy && apt update || true" RUN apt -y install software-properties-common RUN apt-mark hold initscripts RUN apt -y upgrade RUN apt install -y locales locales-all ENV LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8 ENV LANG en_US.UTF-8 ENV LANGUAGE en_US.UTF-8 RUN curl https://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ACCC4CF8.asc | apt-key add - RUN echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ buster-pgdg main" | \ tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/postgres.list RUN curl --silent --location https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_15.x | sudo bash - RUN apt -y update # install these without recommends to avoid pulling in e.g. # X11 libraries, mailutils RUN apt -y install --no-install-recommends git rsyslog logrotate cron ssh-client less RUN apt -y install build-essential rsync \ libxslt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \ libssl-dev libyaml-dev libtool \ libxml2-dev gawk parallel \ postgresql-${PG_MAJOR} postgresql-client-${PG_MAJOR} \ postgresql-contrib-${PG_MAJOR} libpq-dev libreadline-dev \ anacron wget \ psmisc vim whois brotli libunwind-dev \ libtcmalloc-minimal4 cmake \ pngcrush pngquant RUN sed -i -e 's/start -q anacron/anacron -s/' /etc/cron.d/anacron RUN sed -i.bak 's/$ModLoad imklog/#$ModLoad imklog/' /etc/rsyslog.conf RUN sed -i.bak 's/module(load="imklog")/#module(load="imklog")/' /etc/rsyslog.conf RUN dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /sbin/initctl RUN sh -c "test -f /sbin/initctl || ln -s /bin/true /sbin/initctl" RUN cd / &&\ apt -y install runit socat &&\ mkdir -p /etc/runit/1.d &&\ apt clean &&\ rm -f /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/40proxy &&\ locale-gen en_US &&\ apt install -y nodejs &&\ npm install -g terser &&\ npm install -g uglify-js ADD install-nginx /tmp/install-nginx RUN /tmp/install-nginx RUN apt -y install advancecomp jhead jpegoptim libjpeg-turbo-progs optipng RUN mkdir /jemalloc-stable && cd /jemalloc-stable &&\ wget https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc/releases/download/3.6.0/jemalloc-3.6.0.tar.bz2 &&\ tar -xjf jemalloc-3.6.0.tar.bz2 && cd jemalloc-3.6.0 && ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install &&\ cd / && rm -rf /jemalloc-stable RUN mkdir /jemalloc-new && cd /jemalloc-new &&\ wget https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc/releases/download/5.2.1/jemalloc-5.2.1.tar.bz2 &&\ tar -xjf jemalloc-5.2.1.tar.bz2 && cd jemalloc-5.2.1 && ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-install-suffix=5.2.1 && make build_lib && make install_lib &&\ cd / && rm -rf /jemalloc-new RUN echo 'gem: --no-document' >> /usr/local/etc/gemrc &&\ mkdir /src && cd /src && git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build.git &&\ cd /src/ruby-build && ./install.sh &&\ cd / && rm -rf /src/ruby-build && (ruby-build 2.7.2 /usr/local) RUN gem update --system RUN gem install bundler --force &&\ rm -rf /usr/local/share/ri/2.7.2/system &&\ cd / && git clone https://github.com/discourse/pups.git ADD install-redis /tmp/install-redis RUN /tmp/install-redis ADD install-imagemagick /tmp/install-imagemagick RUN /tmp/install-imagemagick # Validate install RUN ruby -Eutf-8 -e "v = \`convert -version\`; %w{png tiff jpeg freetype heic}.each { |f| unless v.include?(f); STDERR.puts('no ' + f + ' support in imagemagick'); exit(-1); end }" # This tool allows us to disable huge page support for our current process # since the flag is preserved through forks and execs it can be used on any # process ADD thpoff.c /src/thpoff.c RUN gcc -o /usr/local/sbin/thpoff /src/thpoff.c && rm /src/thpoff.c # clean up for docker squash RUN rm -fr /usr/share/man &&\ rm -fr /usr/share/doc &&\ rm -fr /usr/share/vim/vim74/tutor &&\ rm -fr /usr/share/vim/vim74/doc &&\ rm -fr /usr/share/vim/vim74/lang &&\ rm -fr /usr/local/share/doc &&\ rm -fr /usr/local/share/ruby-build &&\ rm -fr /root/.gem &&\ rm -fr /root/.npm &&\ rm -fr /tmp/* &&\ rm -fr /usr/share/vim/vim74/spell/en* # this can probably be done, but I worry that people changing PG locales will have issues # cd /usr/share/locale && rm -fr `ls -d */ | grep -v en` RUN mkdir -p /etc/runit/3.d ADD runit-1 /etc/runit/1 ADD runit-1.d-cleanup-pids /etc/runit/1.d/cleanup-pids ADD runit-1.d-anacron /etc/runit/1.d/anacron ADD runit-1.d-00-fix-var-logs /etc/runit/1.d/00-fix-var-logs ADD runit-2 /etc/runit/2 ADD runit-3 /etc/runit/3 ADD boot /sbin/boot ADD cron /etc/service/cron/run ADD rsyslog /etc/service/rsyslog/run ADD cron.d_anacron /etc/cron.d/anacron # Discourse specific bits RUN useradd discourse -s /bin/bash -m -U &&\ mkdir -p /var/www &&\ cd /var/www &&\ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/discourse/discourse.git &&\ cd discourse &&\ git remote set-branches --add origin tests-passed &&\ chown -R discourse:discourse /var/www/discourse &&\ cd /var/www/discourse &&\ sudo -u discourse bundle install --deployment --jobs 4 --without test development &&\ bundle exec rake maxminddb:get &&\ find /var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle -name tmp -type d -exec rm -rf {} + This file has been truncated. show original I did that and did an install, but the changes I made aren’t showing up, so clearly I’m doing something wrong. Any thoughts? Thanks! EDIT: For transparency, and in case someone has an easier way to do this, all I’m trying to do is allow anonymous users to change their usernames and users when they enter anonymous mode. It’s as simple as changing false to true in this line: lib/guardian/user_guardian.rb main return true if is_admin? return false if is_anonymous? return false if is_moderator? && !is_me?(user) can_edit?(user) end def can_edit_name?(user) return false if SiteSetting.auth_overrides_name? return true if is_admin? return false unless SiteSetting.enable_names? return true if is_moderator? return false if is_anonymous? can_edit?(user) end def can_see_notifications?(user) is_me?(user) || is_admin? end def can_see_bookmarks?(user) If there’s a better way, I’m all ears. But this is all I need to enable. I’m skilled with Python and Java and a lot of other back end things, but I know zero Ruby/JavaScript/HTML/etc. EDIT2: As per a post I saw elsewhere, I updated app.yml as follows: run: - exec: cd: /var/www/discourse cmd: - sudo -u discourse git remote set-url origin https://github.com/my/forked/discourse.git - sudo -u discourse git fetch origin - sudo -u discourse git checkout origin/master Still no joy after rebuilding the app. Launches okay but my changes are not present, it seems.

Is it not possible to wrap your changes into a plugin and use that instead?

[image] leighno5: I’ve forked Discourse and made my own changes Everyone who has done that had been very sorry. And you can’t get much help here. Whatever you’re doing, do in a plugin.

Okay. Any idea how I might do this via plugin?

Hey @leighno5 My thoughts to you are, from personal experience, is that writing plugins for Ruby to do what you are doing in your “fork” is much easier done from a plugin, when we understand Ruby and Rails enough to easily write a plugin for Discourse (or modify any Rails class). If we don’t understand Rails and Ruby easy enough to write a Discourse plugin, my experience is forking Discourse and hacking on core is “misguided”. I guess the analogy is this (sorry for this simple idea): “Someone finds it difficult to walk; so they decide to run instead.” Let me explain, if you do not mind: Before I started writing Rails applications (nothing to do with Discourse), and tried to write Discourse plugins, I was a bit lost; and was even annoyed with Discourse a bit, I think. It’s like when you want to hit a golf ball the first time; it does not go straight and takes a lot of work to hit the ball in the middle of the fairway. Forking Discourse is like pulling out the big driver on the range before you can chip and putt with the short irons! I took a break from hacking Discourse (many months backed) and worked for a while actually building a number of Rails applications from the ground up; and then (and only then) I began to develop some “instinctive” knowledge about Rails. After that, when I decided to modify Discourse (I’m currently running 6 custom plugins I wrote in production for Discourse), everything became intuitive and plugins which modified the Ruby core became too simple. Ruby is very flexible. We can override any class, any object. We can redefine every aspect of Ruby. With some experience, we start to go “WOW”, I had no idea Ruby was so flexible (and powerful) and start to “become dangerous” because we can fly like superman with Ruby and Rails. We are on the beginning of our Ruby and Rails journey at that time, not the end! With the Ruby and Rails knowledge I have gained in 2020, knowing what I know now, I would never fork Discourse and make changes to the Ruby and Rails core as you are proposing, because plugins are just too easy to override and modify Ruby classes, when we understand the basics of Ruby classes and the basics of meta-programming. I guess what I am saying is, sorry to be so direct, is that if someone thinks they need to hack the Discourse core to make some minor Ruby changes; then they don’t understand Ruby and Rails enough; because if they did, they would not hack the core and just write a quick plugin to override the classes and love monkey-patching. On the other hand, if I was wanted to do something crazy and be miserable like replacing Discourse EmberJS with React and Ant Design, then forking would be the only way to go! However, in my view, “Discourse” is not defined by the “Javascript libs”. Discourse is defined by the skills of the core development team (the people) and their attention to detail, customer service, team approach to open source code development, their SPA feature pipeline, and all their hard work! It would be a bit crazy (in my mind) to toss all that brain power alway just because we might like Ant Design (with React) or VueJS over Ember. The same is totally true even more if we are just going modify core Discourse here and there! It would be a bit “nutty” to fork it to do that, tossing away the “people” who are the “real” Discourse (not the code). I am speaking only from my personal journey in 2020 learning Ruby and Rails. Now, it’s becoming easy (the basics) and I’m “dangerous”, LOL. I can “monkey patch around with anything”, which is not alway good; and that is what Discourse plugins are for. Keep the core solid as a rock, and enjoy “monkeying around” with Discourse with plugins. Hope this helps. Note, while writing this reply, you wrote: [image] leighno5: Okay. Any idea how I might do this via plugin? This kinda proves my point, don’t you think? Writing a “plugin” in Discourse is writing “Ruby code” (on one level) and for others it goes much deeper (in EmberJS). Before you start writing Discourse plugins, my friendly advice, perhaps seeming not of value to you, is to first go develop some Ruby on Rails apps. Learn your way around Ruby and Rails, at least the basics, after that, you will have answered your own question above. I was on the phone this morning in conference call with a client for three hours going over a Rails app, validations, models, etc. and then I was taking a break after coding up some of the action items from the call, and read your post. The shortest path to writing Discourse plugins, in my view, is to learn Rails first. Hope this helps!

Here’s a good starting point: [image] Developing Discourse Plugins - Part 1 - Create a basic plugin Developer Guides Building a plugin in Discourse can be really simple, once you learn a couple of quirks. The goal of this post is to create a skeleton plugin and introduce you to the basics. Your development environment Make sure you have a development environment of Discourse running on your computer. I recommend you use the appropriate setup guide and come back when you’re done. plugin.rb tada Use GitHub - discourse/discourse-plugin-skeleton: Template for Discourse plugins · GitHub to create a complete di…

No you’re exactly correct. I have no experience with Ruby at all, so certainly no offense taken! I’ve seen the plug-in guide and have been through it a couple of times, but unfortunately my Ruby ignorance continues to frustrate, and I have no clue how I would write a plug-in that would override that little bit of code in the user-guardian file to allow anonymous users to change their names. :confused:

[image] leighno5: I’ve seen the plug-in guide and have been through it a couple of times, but unfortunately my Ruby ignorance continues to frustrate, and I have no clue how I would write a plug-in that would override that little bit of code in the user-guardian file to allow anonymous users to change their names Hi @leighno5 Yes, I understand. Those “HOWTO” plugin topics were written by very talented developers with over a decade of Rails and Ruby programming experience (maybe even more). In fact, some of those guys are among the top Ruby and JS developers in the world. I am sure, 100%, that those guys all learned Rails and Ruby long before they wrote their first Discourse plugin. It’s actually not that hard to learn Rails; but you need to actually do the “hands on ritual” of building a few Rails apps from the ground up. Not just following along a YT tutorial (which is good); but actually building a working application where you must deal with setting up the database, generating your own models, generating your own controllers, writing model validations, writing initializers, helper modules, migrating (modifying) the DB, working with embedded Ruby and more. It’s actually very fun and it is the “shortest path” to learning to actually feel comfortable to write a plugin (regarding the Rails side of things, I don’t really do Ember personally, but love the Rails side of the house)! Also, you must learn the Rails console! The Rails console is really fun and I use it everyday with pleasure! Today, my favorite client and I were doing AnyDesk and he said “can we have this new view of Inventory?”. He wanted to watch me do it all. After we got it up and running, at the end of the call he said "you did something in Rails in 30 minutes that would have taken many weeks a few decades ago!!). Truly awesome, @leighno5. Go for it!! After you learn Rails, you will say “WOW” writing Discourse plugins are pretty easy, at least for the Rails and Ruby part!! HTH

Look at existing #plugin code. There are absolutely loads of them now so plenty of examples. Do not skip on reading prior art so you can leverage it. Sounds like you just want to override one method which is simply a case of redefining it in your plugin.rb (though best practice is arguably to break it out into its own file per module, but not worth it for one method!)

[image] merefield: of redefining it in your plugin.rb At the risk of further showing my ignorance and taking advantage of the kindness you’ve already shown me, would you be willing to expand on this a bit? Or if you’re aware of another example where someone has overridden a module and can link that, I’d be grateful. I’m not at all opposed to “rtfm,” but my lack of understanding of how Discourse works is frustrating, despite all the time I’ve spent going over various tutorials and documents. And yes, I know such basic questions make it seem that I’ve put little effort into it, but I promise that’s not the case!

Here’s one where we’ve defined a method in the PostGuardian: lib/guardian_edits.rb f4332f974 require_dependency 'guardian' require_dependency 'guardian/post_guardian' class ::Guardian attr_accessor :featured_images end module ::PostGuardian # Passing existing loaded topic record avoids an N+1. def previewed_post_can_act?(post, topic, action_key, opts = {}) taken = opts[:taken_actions].try(:keys).to_a is_flag = PostActionType.is_flag?(action_key) already_taken_this_action = taken.any? && taken.include?(PostActionType.types[action_key]) already_did_flagging = taken.any? && (taken & PostActionType.flag_types.values).any? result = if authenticated? && post && !@user.anonymous? return false if action_key == :notify_moderators && !SiteSetting.enable_private_messages # we allow flagging for trust level 1 and higher You could do something similar for the UserGuardian using the existing method name which should override it. Simple solution (to get it working if not robustly): Literally just write out the original method code and make your edit. Downside: if Discourse change the code your plugin could break the instance. Advanced solution (more robust solution): For extra points you might be able to use super to inherit the original method but that’s not guaranteed to work for reasons I shan’t elaborate here on but is best practice because then updates to that method in discourse will always be taken into account without you having to edit your plugin. Discourse is a platform. It takes time to learn it. Just take it step by step.

Overriding user_guardian.rb in a plugin (no fork necessary!)

Development

itsbhanusharma (Bhanu Sharma) January 3, 2021, 9:24am 6

Here’s a good starting point:

Topic		Replies	Views
Developing Discourse Plugins - Part 1 - Create a basic plugin Developer Guides plugin-guides , tutorial	32	85493	July 8, 2025
How to customize / override topic guardian through a plugin Development	4	864	February 15, 2021
Rails plugin generator Announcements	49	13963	August 20, 2021
[PAID] Mentorship needed Marketplace	7	1835	December 16, 2019
Simple example for plugin to change files? Development	3	578	July 1, 2023

Overriding user_guardian.rb in a plugin (no fork necessary!)

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